Acknowledgments

Thanks to the Virginia Commission for the Arts for the Individual Artist Fellowship that kept me from sinking, the University of the South, Sewanee, for the Tennessee Williams Scholarship, and the University of Virginia for the Henry Hoyns Fellowship and the great library.

Thanks to the writers who helped me along the way: Michael Pearson, Janet Peery, Sheri Reynolds, Ben Marcus, Mark Richard, George Garrett, Deborah Eisenberg, and Doug Day.

Thanks to my wonderful agent Jenny Bent for all of her support and for putting this book into the hands of Doug Pepper, my editor at Crown, who performed wonders.

Thanks to the editors of Creative Nonfiction and Salon, where a portion of Angelhead, in slightly different form, first appeared.

And thanks especially to my wife and mother—the best people I know.